The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Script review with Kyle Jolly
Emmy winning Animation Producer
Can you make a successful film from an unknown project about a dysfunctional family of oddballs without powers outside of their belief in each other? This film proved that you can do it at the highest level if you have the most important thing, a good script. But what makes a good script? Part of it is making something that’s producible which is where I always look first. The best stories can be dragged down by excessive complexity and unnecessary elements.
In my 20+ years of producing animation for some of the biggest properties and top studios that is something that is always a consideration because some writers think “hey, it’s animation, we can do anything” and you can but it all comes at a cost of time, money and artistic resources. If you don’t spend those wisely you are doomed to going over budget and missing your delivery deadline, the two mortal sins of production. Fortunately, there’s a tool like Scriptsee to help break down films like this in minutes and provide the valuable data needed for producers like me to analyze and plan for a successful production. So, let’s dive in.
THE DASHBOARD
THE BREAKDOWN
FIG 1: The Mitchells vs. The Machines - The Dashboard
The breakdown looks good with a total of 107 scenes and 1921 shots with an average scene duration of 80 seconds. Looking at the action intensity, I would break this up into 3 sections and put an assistant director on each section with my director overseeing them. Each assistant director would oversee a team of 4-5 storyboard artists over the course of 3 months with another month for animatic revisions and rewrites. This film is producible so far and my job has been made easier with access to the important data is a dashboard that I can easily read and instantly update when new drafts come across my desk.
The first place I like to go is the dashboard so I can get a sense of the overall scope of the film. A duration of 143 minutes feels a little long but not unwieldy for a script that’s coming in at 154 pages.
The action to dialogue ratio is a nicely balanced 51:49 and the action intensity seems reasonable so no red flags there. My character count at 22 is great for my design team even though I know there are far more characters that will require animation from reading the script. Locations at 59, 168 props and 149 effects are also reasonable for an animated feature so we’re looking good. I can start to put together a realistic budget and schedule now based on this raw data. Now I want to get further into the details and look deeper for red flags so we’ll jump into another analysis suite for script pacing to check story flow and figure out how many artists, animators and directors I’ll need to assign to this film.
FIG 2: The Mitchells vs. The Machines - Breakdown & Action Intensity
STORY ARCS & DECSIONS
Now I need to plan for my assignments to the directors and that’s where the next data point is really useful to make sure that all our story points connect early on rather than discovering it in animation retakes where it gets expensive and the schedule gets crunched. We’re going to check out Scriptsee’s story arcs page next.
FIG 3: The Mitchells vs. The Machines - Story Arcs
We immediately see that our main character Katie is driving the story, her dad Rick is the most decisive and that she is the most affected. That’s what I thought when I read the script so it’s great to see it here in the data. It’s also great to see that story arcs that started early on in our film pay off throughout and some don’t land until late. That’s important to discuss with our directors so they know when and where to reveal story points so that we don’t have to try to wedge them in later on or leave them hanging
because we are approaching a deadline. That’s often one of the main complaints with audiences that they are left unsatisfied with a story arc that was introduced early and never paid off in the end. With Scriptsee I’m able to help avoid that issue and make a better film without compromising my budget or schedule. And I can dive deeper and help my directors and writers with the next view detailing decision making by our characters.
FIG 4: The Mitchells vs. The Machines - Character Decisions
This view shows us a breakdown of decision making so that we can see how our character relationships affect each other and drive the story forward. We immediately see that our main decision makers are Katie and her dad Rick with the rest of the Mitchell family affected by those decisions. This misunderstood but loving relationship is the main source of conflict, comedy and heart in this film so it feels right and is something that our directors and writers can lean into throughout the production process to keep all of the conflict, humor, heart and humanity aligned. So now we know how important these relationships are, let’s jump into our next data set and look at our multi-character presence to see how well represented our main characters are throughout the film’s duration.
CHARACTER PRESENCE
In the Multi-character presence analysis our main story drivers Katie and her dad Rick are well represented throughout the entirety of the film while mom Linda, little brother Aaron and family dog Monchi are there throughout supporting the conflict and comedy. We also see our antagonist Pal Max Prime is well represented but never dominating the story of our Mitchell family adventure. This is well distributed and this view helps inform me that we’ll need to concentrate additional resources on character pose and expression sheets for Katie and Rick early on to inspire our directors, board artists and animators to get the best performances possible.
Next up we’ll go to one of the most useful script analysis data suites in Scriptsee, the script complexity page.
FIG 5: The Mitchells vs. The Machines - Multi-character Presence
COMPLEXITY
The complexity view allows me to plan my production. Asset breakdowns help determine how many character, prop, and background designers we’ll need to hire in pre-production and into production so make our budget and schedule realistically sustainable and achievable. I can determine how many effects artists and animators we’ll need to put on and for how long by reviewing the breakdown, scene complexity and action intensity. This information will help our directors assign their best storyboard artists and animators to the most challenging sections of the film so there’s no wasted effort or frustration among the artists or disruptions to the schedule deadlines. We can also make sure to curate artistic assignments and finally look to reduce costs if needed by eliminating any unnecessary scenes, shots, designs or effects.
FIG 6: The Mitchells vs. The Machines - Complexity
The only question is how will that affect other parts of the story. That’s where the next data suite can be really useful with Scriptsee’s interactions page as we can see below.
INTERACTIONS - DIVING IN DEEP
Scriptsee allows me to go in deep at any point and answer productions questions that might arise. With the interactions view I can drill down into the detail. Clicking on one of the props we see the wooden moose (FIG 7). We know from reading the
story that it’s important to the story but someone on my team may think it’s not needed. But they can immediately see how many times it is used and who interacts with it. Likewise, we can see a similar thing with our characters like Hailey Posey (FIG 8) who may not seem important until we look at all of the characters, places and things she interacts with. These views are not only useful for my team but they can really help our designers and art directors in production as they craft their mood boards and color scripts from this intel with focussed lenses.
FIG 7: The Mitchells vs. The Machines - Prop Interaction
FIG 8: The Mitchells vs. The Machines - Character Interaction
SUMMARY
We know that creators want to make memorable films but crafting stories that are powerful, endearing, aspirational and laugh out loud funny is challenging work even with the best source material and the most talented artists. The Mitchells vs. The Machines is an all-time favorite of mine which is why I chose it for this article but what is it that makes it so freaking awesome? This beloved film won 46 of the 65 various awards it was nominated for so I think we can agree that it is a special story that captured the imaginations of critics and fans alike. What I have found, is in the same way that a film camera can capture a moment in time or a spotlight can make a performer shine, Scriptsee is another tool that storytellers can use to give them insight into the words on a page before they become moving pictures on the big screen.